Chinese Weather Balloons, and Should You Worry About Them?

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flyingeagle said:
That balloon should have been shot down over Alaska before it reached the lower states. The Chinese already got their information by the time it was shot down. My brother in law said after the balloon was shot down just seconds later was a very loud boom that shook everything. People in his neighborhood came out of their houses not know what the explosion was.
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As in the delayed sound of the warhead's explosion reaching the ground...
 
I couldn’t agree more. Nothing like an Eagle eye view. Whoops our balloon got away but we didn’t tell you about it. Yea Right! That’s why one is flying around South America right now. How many balloons do they need?
 
Pat Gordzelik said:
Typo. I actually have an engineering and accountant degree.
Thanks for catching that, my bad.
Just enjoying rocket friends and banter. I’ll strive to do better.
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Steve is right, I don't know who you are. Maybe I'll figure that out one day.

As for the correction, I had an old boss who was always talking about "mute points," and was clearly ignorant of the distinction. It didn't make him look good. Just trying to help spread the knowledge of the language.

Bravo52 said:
As an interesting side note, this is the first "Official" kill of the F-22. No one would have ever guessed in a thousand years the first F-22 kill would be on a balloon. Also interesting, and more importantly, the B-52 still has a higher air-to-air kill tally than the F-22 and F-35 fleets combined. The more you know...
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Good ol' BUFF has been in a lot more wars.
 
flyingeagle said:
That balloon should have been shot down over Alaska before it reached the lower states. The Chinese already got their information by the time it was shot down. My brother in law said after the balloon was shot down just seconds later was a very loud boom that shook everything. People in his neighborhood came out of their houses not know what the explosion was. He sent me cool pictures of the jets releasing their rockets to take it down. I have to have him send them to me. Way to long to take it out. It’s funny how another one is flying around below the equator.
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They shot it down over the ocean... which makes me think that this was their strategy all along. They wanted to minimize the damage to the payload.
 
My other brother in law said he was shopping at Lowe’s when the customers herd the explosion and everyone ran out of the store to see what was happening.
 
SolarYellow said:
Steve is right, I don't know who you are. Maybe I'll figure that out one day.

As for the correction, I had an old boss who was always talking about "mute points," and was clearly ignorant of the distinction. It didn't make him look good. Just trying to help spread the knowledge of the language.
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If you ever watched any television shows that featured high power rocketry in the 2000s, you would have seen Pat. He’s intelligent, witty, and very well spoken. He absolutely knows the difference between moot and mute. (I’ll deny I ever said anything nice like that next time I see him)
Because he came across so well on camera, he was often the spokesperson for Tripoli Rocketry Association and his work as the insurance chair, while we were struggling through the ATF lawsuit and financial woes, (led by some very good presidents at that time) helped lay the groundwork for our thriving high power rocketry now.
 
hobie1dog said:
you know that our satellites could have told you exactly what GPS position it was when it splashed down, and you also know that we could have taken five or six of these boats and made it out to the Splashdown site in about an hour, not two days :p
hFpfFKT.jpg
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Sure, you could send a Formula 1 car to pull a car out of the ditch instead of a tow truck. It'll definitely get there faster in good weather. Definitely not the easiest way to do the job tough... 🤪
 
As always, there's an XKCD for this:
1675615262484.png

If the baloon was ~120 feet across (three school buses) and the substructure was 80 feet, it falls into a really terrible units hole. The balloon is just a hair bigger (and the substructure is a hair smaller) than the width of a football field but less than half the length. No wonder they had to use school bus units. :rolleyes:
 
A lot depends on the kind of school bus you are talking about. A typical full-sized school bus measures .33 Chinese Balloons. But the small bus can be as short as .17 CB.
 
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stealth6 said:
Second.... I heard a radio interview a couple days ago.

The guy talking was basically saying that he's surprised there's as much reaction about this as there has been. Apparently, the US has over a thousand such balloons over the continent at any given time. They are all at such an altitude (60,000' plus) that essentially no one notices them, even though they are "in plain sight" all over the place. They go up, and come down, all the time.

Yes, this one is Chinese, and yes that is definitely a concern. But according to him, it's really not all that unusual, given that there's thousands of balloons up there "all the time", and that a certain percentage of them (ours AND theirs) are bound to go off course (perhaps even intentionally) from time to time. He made it sound like a foreign "weather balloon" over the country is probably more common than not.

Either way, it shouldn't have been there, and the US was right to deal with it. But the whole "shocked and surprised" thing is overblown. See a Chinese balloon over your territory? Shoot it down, and get on with your life. Done.

s6
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Furthering this...........

The Defense Department put out a statement yesterday about shooting this balloon down. In that statement they also happened to mention that at least three times during "the previous administration", Chinese weather/surveillance balloons were discovered over the U.S. . NO action was taken during those incidents.

Gee, I don't seem to remember a whole lot of panic-stricken media/political hoopla those times. Interesting, no?

s6
 
https://trailandsummit.com/how-long-is-a-school-bus/
So, how long is a school bus? School buses range anywhere from 20 to 45 feet in length. In general, buses that are 20-25 feet long are considered mini or short. While buses that are 25-35 feet long fall into the mid-size category, and buses over 35 feet are full-sized.
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(Bold is from the original source, not added here.)

It's between 60 and 135 feet across, apparently. It's almost like they intentionally didn't want to say how big it actually is. Or, more likely, the news media had no clue.
 
Steve Shannon said:
If you ever watched any television shows that featured high power rocketry in the 2000s, you would have seen Pat. He’s intelligent, witty, and very well spoken. He absolutely knows the difference between moot and mute. (I’ll deny I ever said anything nice like that next time I see him)
Because he came across so well on camera, he was often the spokesperson for Tripoli Rocketry Association and his work as the insurance chair, while we were struggling through the ATF lawsuit and financial woes, (led by some very good presidents at that time) helped lay the groundwork for our thriving high power rocketry now.
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I'm not much of a TV watcher, and as a BAR, that's all long before my time. Thanks for the info! Glad to know we have people like that on our team, and blessed to be able to interact with y'all here.
 
SolarYellow said:
https://trailandsummit.com/how-long-is-a-school-bus/

(Bold is from the original source, not added here.)

It's between 60 and 135 feet across, apparently. It's almost like they intentionally didn't want to say how big it actually is. Or, more likely, the news media had no clue.
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The 60-135 feet comes from converting from school buses to feet and uncertainty over the length of the bus.

If it’s 3 school buses long, is that 3 short buses? Then 3 buses x (20 feet / 1 bus) = 60 feet.

Or is it 3 long buses? Then 3 buses x (45 feet / 1 bus) = 135 feet.

This is why you can’t just say “school buses” when expressing length. It’s like short tons and long tons. Length should ALWAYS be expressed in either short buses or long buses to avoid ambiguity.
 
Steve Shannon said:
If I were required to bring it down (remember it’s the size of three school buses) I would use a piloted drone (think cruise missile for target practice) and just pilot it through the balloon and to a safe crash site, assuming the drone could survive the entanglement.
Unfortunately, it’s no longer above the sparsely populated western states so it’s probably not able to be targeted until it’s beyond the eastern seaboard.
This does give our folks a longer chance to study the thing.
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It also allows the Chinese to complete their mission.
 
Marc_G said:
great shot. Clearly the payload wasn't blown to bits as some would suggest. Looks like they very effectively popped the balloon with minimum collateral damage to the payload.
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Finally... You saved me some typing. Also, the balloon was converted to a drogue. If the solar panels survived they'll add drag.
 
stealth6 said:
Furthering this...........

The Defense Department put out a statement yesterday about shooting this balloon down. In that statement they also happened to mention that at least three times during "the previous administration", Chinese weather/surveillance balloons were discovered over the U.S. . NO action was taken during those incidents.

Gee, I don't seem to remember a whole lot of panic-stricken media/political hoopla those times. Interesting, no?

s6
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To be fair though, it’s not exactly the same thing, because the previous administration believed the balloons originated in “Jyna”.
 
stealth6 said:
Furthering this...........

The Defense Department put out a statement yesterday about shooting this balloon down. In that statement they also happened to mention that at least three times during "the previous administration", Chinese weather/surveillance balloons were discovered over the U.S. . NO action was taken during those incidents.

Gee, I don't seem to remember a whole lot of panic-stricken media/political hoopla those times. Interesting, no?

s6
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Nice try. We are expected to believe that the TDS-afflicted media and leakers in the government just let that slide? If somehow Trump was perceived as asleep at the wheel and colluding with China, it would have been all over the news. Yet, not a peep. BS.

Even if the DoD statement is true, then "Over the US" where exactly? Certainly not as brazen as flying within eyesight over much of the continental US.
 

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